CVG writes: "The next Banjo-Kazooie game could expand upon the vehicle-building concept of upcoming sequel Nuts & Bolts - provided the new game goes down well with the public, Rare has told CVG.

"[Nuts & Bolts] is like an introduction to what we could do," senior animator Ellissa Miller told CVG. "If we went on and did some more then we could push it. If it was accepted and people enjoyed it then we could definitely push it in a much bigger direction. This is like an opening to a new type of gaming I guess."
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OXM reports that Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts did originally start life as a platformer.

However, Rare's Neil Harrison admits that it felt stale and didn't fit in with today's market.

"We thought well, we'll just do another platform game as Banjo Kazooie," Harrison explains. "We did that for a bit and as gamers and as developers, it just felt a little bit stale. It felt like it didn't fit in today's market. With the 360, there's just so much more we can do, we thought we'd try something different."
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In the latest issue of OXM there is a small segment on Nuts and bolts. It states that the Banjo 64 coming to XBLA will be an exact port and specifically states "will include the Nintendo logo on the title screen". It then says that Microsoft made a deal with Nintendo...
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From GAMER.tm: "Gamers in Belgium and Holland will be paying more than other European countries for Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts and Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, due to the cost of translating both games.

"While both titles are widely expected to go on sale for around EUR 39 in most major markets, it seems that gamers in Holland and Belgium will be paying EUR 59 for Pinata 2 and Banjo Nuts & Bolts respectively.

"When asked by Dutch site Perfect-Rare why this was the case, a Microsoft Benelux spokesperson blamed the cost of translating both games and the relative size of both markets for the decision."
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When MundoRare yesterday asked Rare about Nuts & Bolts' European release, the answer they gave was "around a week after the US' release." Thankfully someone over there saw it differently for you guys, and today MundoRare got a new answer.

As opposed to a week after November 14th, now the official release date for Europe is... November 14th. That's right, for the first time in... well, ever, a Rare retail game will be released on the same day for both North America and Europe.

As for Banjo XBLA? ...
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Advanced orders for Microsoft Corp.'s Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts for the Xbox 360 upon availability at Amazon.com this week.

On Wed., Nuts & Bolts held a 17,850 percent sales increase to rank at No. 4 in Amazon's Video Games division.
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Addict Gaming Writes ""A Marketplace demo? Yes," lead programmer Salvatore Fileccia told Eurogamer when they visited their studios last week for a Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts hands-on preview, published today. "We've got various different ideas. I think all the leads on the team all have their own idea what the demo should be, and it obviously makes sense for the demo to happen before the game ships. We all feel that it's essential because the game is so different.""
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Ready your spring-loaded propeller boat and fasten your seatbelt, "Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts" is hitting U.S. store shelves on November 14, and pre-orders begin today. For the retail price of $39.99, those who pre-order at participating retailers will get in on all the Banjo fun right off the starting line, and as a special bonus, will also receive a free download code for the original "Banjo-Kazooie," launching on Xbox LIVE Arcade later this fall.

As Kazooie likes to say, "The early bird gets the worm." Since the original "Banjo-Kazooie" will not debut on Xbox LIVE Arcade until a couple weeks after "Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts" releases, pre-ordering the game gives you a two-week head start on the Arcade title and the opportunity to take advantage of "Stop N' Swop" before anyone else. "Stop N' Swop" rewards players' accomplishments in the new game with extra content and features in the Xbox LIVE Arcade game, giving fans who pre-order "Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts" the chance to experience more Banjo action than ever.
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From CVG: Banjo-Kazooie dated Nov 14 but if you pre-order before Nov. 14 you get Xbox Live Arcade game free and first.
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The german Games Convention of Leizpig has progressively gained relevance as one of the main events of the gaming industry each Summer to the detriment of the dying E3. And despite Rare not likely showing anything new, this year Rare will find it the perfect place to deploy all their offerings for this Fall, including updated versions of the recent demos from the American showcases.
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"MundoRare has confirmed through different insider sources that, apart from Banjo-Kazooie XBLA, external developer 4J Studios is also working on its sequel, Banjo-Tooie, which will hit our consoles sometime in the future.

Therefore, the idea is not only to provide players with a new connection between BK XBLA and Nuts & Bolts, but also -quite possibly- bring back the original (or, at least, similar) feature between BK and BT that Rare wasn't able to add on Tooie due to later revisions of the N64 circuitry."
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Endsights writes:

Two of Microsoft's key family-friendly titles might be discounted when they ship this Fall. On a number of online retailers, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and Viva Pinata 2 have been mysteriously priced at $39.99
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Speaking to VideoGamer.com at Develop last week, Rare senior software engineer Nick Burton, an employee at Rare for over 10 years, has revealed that when talking about the studios' owned intellectual property "there's a good chance of seeing any of it again".

"You might see Killer Instinct, you might see Battletoads. Or as I said the other month Killer Instinct meets Battletoads in the GoldenEye universe!" joked Burton.

The titles the Microsoft owned studio is currently working on is something that's constantly debated on internet forums, and speculation isn't helped by Rare's constant teasing. Do you remember the Rare 2007 Christmas card that hinted at a new Killer Instinct? Burton was all too happy to reveal the story behind the card.

"You'll probably have to rephrase this, we're just fu!$ing with you!" he joked. "Have you not noticed a theme in our Christmas cards? We do it every year! It's just sometimes people don't notice it because it's that subtle.

"Ryan (Stevenson, senior concept artist), when he was doing it said, oh I'm putting Killer Instinct in that, I am. The conversation was, put Battletoads in as well! Or Snake Rattle and Roll, come on do it! We have a reputation for teasing. Sometimes we do it for good reasons and other times it upsets people. We're English, we're allowed to!"

Burton wouldn't be drawn on confirming the existence of a new Killer Instinct title, but say that "you could pick anything in our back catalogue and then turn it into something new".
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Rare's George Kelion's confirmed that "fresh" Banjo stuff will be shown behind closed doors at Games Convention.
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Speaking to VideoGamer.com at the Develop conference in Brighton last week, Nick Burton, a senior software engineer at Rare, has assured Xbox 360 gamers that there's plenty more to come from the console.

"You never can push them as far as they can go. The reality of the peak performance of the console is yes, you could look to a generation beyond where we are now and think, yeah, I could use that power. But the reality is in 360 and the PS3 and the latest generation PC graphics, the amount of power in the GPUs is such that you're more bound by your creativity and the aesthetic you're going for than you're really bound by polygon pushing power," said Burton. "You're probably actually more bound maybe by art authoring and the amount of data throughput that, just the amount of memory you'd need, but I don't think 360 has reached its limit."
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Speaking to VideoGamer.com at the Develop conference in Brighton last week, Nick Burton, a senior software engineer at Rare, revealed that currently announced Rare titles only account for half the development studio.

Asked directly if Rare would be making a second Kameo title Burton replied: "This is where I have to be enigmatically vague. Never say never. I'll say that I'm not working on one at the moment. I'm not working on one at the moment. Doesn't mean nobody else is, but that doesn't mean they are either. Sorry. For the obvious PR reasons we can't talk about what we're doing now."

He went on to suggest that there's plenty going on behind closed doors at Rare that should have gamers getting very excited.

"All I can say is, you know about VP2 (Viva Piñata Trouble in Paradise), Viva Piñata on DS, Banjo obviously. There's a couple of things on the roster that are going to be pretty cool as well. Obviously you do the math. Look at the size and how big the Banjo team currently needs to be, how big our shared technology group and asset group are. Look at the number of games and how they're staggered and how many teams we have. There's about half the studio missing from the release schedule at the moment (laughs)," said Burton.
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Very sad news from Redmond, Wash. Melissa Batten, 36, a software development engineer in Microsoft's Xbox division, was murdered by her estranged husband, who then shot himself to death, earlier this week.
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Videogamer writes: "But only if Rare deems it a 'definite worthwhile improvement'.

There is a "possibility" that players will be able to share complete vehicles in upcoming Xbox 360 exclusive platformer Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, developer Rare has revealed.

As the title suggests, Nuts & Bolts, Rare's follow up to the N64's Banjo-Tooie, features vehicle creation using parts discovered by players during exploration of the game world.

Currently players will only be able to share vehicle blueprints with players, both friends and strangers. These blueprints tell players what parts are needed to construct a particular vehicle. They do not provide them."
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The future of user-gen includes some noteworthy players, not the least of which is developer Media Molecule and LittleBigPlanet, which has become a hype machine for the PS3. But this piece of work looks like it just might live up to the hype. Already people have witnessed the flexibility of the level-creation system (At E3, Sony used LittleBigPlanet to great effect to present what would've been a boring slog through sales figures), and the community aspects attached to this title are just as promising.

But there is another user-gen game, one that people didn't know was user-gen-centric until a few months ago: the Rare-developed Xbox 360 title, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, a game whose hook is allowing users to create and share vehicles to traverse virtual landscapes. Is this Microsoft's mass market, user-gen answer to LittleBigPlanet?
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"The highly anticipated return of Banjo to the Xbox 360 is drawing ever closer and the boys (and girls) over at Rare have decided to let us in on some juicy development information regarding Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. In the first of many dev diaries, Rare explains that the Banjo team is squarely focused on the single player campaign, with multiplayer nearly complete."
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